Vulture Medicine

by Soul Places | Diane Ludeking

Vulture CaveCopyright Diane Ludeking 2012

It’s International Vulture Awareness Day (September 1, 2012)! Up until a few months ago, I never gave Vulture much thought, although I see them more since moving to NE Iowa ten months ago. The bluffs offer protection, plenty of food and community for them.

What changed my mind was an intense encounter with Vulture a few months ago.

I had wandered through the woods in search of a spring and stream, but instead entered the lair of about eight vultures who quickly took flight only twenty feet above me. I heard them first. The sound of a few small breaking twigs met my ears as their wings brushed through the heavily wooded area they called home base. I froze. My eyes went instinctually from the task of picking a way through the dense forest floor to the trees above and before me.

And then I felt the air around me pulse as their wings displaced it with the effort of flight. Vulture’s magnificent presence reached me in waves. I felt a vibration run through me, raising hairs on my arms and lowering my temperature as my blood fell to my feet. A chill went through me. I opened my mouth, but my exclamation was silent.

Once I no longer heard them and was no longer frozen by the grips of their trance, I continued forward. I found the stream bed, bone dry in this summer’s drought. I walked over the chalky white stones in my barefoot shoes, imagining cold spring water rushing about my ankles. Dark brown feathers were scattered haphazardly about, covered in scat. That is when I noticed the white stones had been baptized by Vulture. I paused just then to take in the magnitude of life here.

Their dark feathers every few feet also accentuated the fragile grey bones strewn about. I felt like a trespasser.

Sacred things happened here, past and present. I bowed to the unknown and then lifted my eyes to take in the shear rock cliff to my right, hidden behind ancient trees. A large opening in the cliff drew me in. I heard a faint drip from within and below the back wall of the cave. The drips spaced too far apart were the only evidence of a struggling spring.

I left that place reluctantly.

When I got home, I reached for Animal Speak by Ted Andrews to read about the vulture. Vulture is more brilliant that I ever imagined. I recommend the book if you don’t have it as what I’m about to share about Vulture is what resonated with me. Vulture may speak differently to you, but this is what I found most profound (paraphrasing):

Vulture can soar for hours in the thermals, assisting those with this totem to work with energy and auras. It demonstrates how to use little to no energy while soaring.

Vulture has one of the most important ecological roles because it consumes dead carcasses and “recycles” potential disease into one of the most potent anti-bacterial solutions in nature – its excrement! It reminds me of purification and renewal.

It’s circling patterns in the sky remind me of patterns in my life and in the earth’s life. It reminds me to be effortless in exploring my own patterns and allow nature to do the same.

Vulture is often misunderstood. It reminds me to remain true to myself and my gifts. I am more important than I know. I have impact just as I am.

I wish I had the book with me to share more, but alas, the intrigued seeker will find. Please share your thoughts in the comments – I yearn for your words.

Go forth and resonate with Vulture in your own way today and everyday.

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15 Comments to “Vulture Medicine”

So much we fear or disdain is actually so crucial to the cycles of life. I helped a friend move from the house she’d lived in for 20+ years. In the basement she found an old snake skin. She went ballistic! Turns out that snake kept rodents in check in the basement that otherwise would have ruined everything down there. She wound up blessing that snake.

So true. I found a snake skin three days ago and thought of how it reminds me to shed things I have outgrown or worn out. I didn’t find it in my house or I may have had the same initial reaction as your friend.

So well written… thanks. I’m struck by the vulture as one who brings the dead within where there is something in its being that changes it into the life-giving. This is a strong image about change. In the denial of change and loss is an unwillingnes to see what has died or the unlovely remains of former ‘bodies’ of thought or decisions or paths. I wonder about the invitation to bring into oneself the former, cultivate an inner chemistry that acts upon the remains of the loss, and create and leave a trail for others in our lives that is wholesome, holy. Hmm. Gotta’ think about it more… but I must admit, I never like seeing vultures… yeeeechhh! The visceral may not change in that regard! :-)

Loved your blog, and I do have the book! I refer to it often and have found much wisdom in my life since doing so. Thank you for bringing vulture’s lesson closer to many of us. We often fear what we do not understand – needlessly.

I’ve always loved the line (since I was once a full time teacher in my young adult years) “you teach best what you most need to learn”. If I’m arranging words, it’s absolutely because the threads are challenging me and word-art-ing helps me explore. Journaling does that, sometimes at a safer distance, allowing me/us to get closer to silence and vulnerability on some of these lessons. Thanks for the fodder, Diane! I’m so glad to ‘meet’ you here in these realms of learning and traveling. I’m still thinking about the unlovely remains, and what it means to integrate etc.!

Oh to soar with such ease and grace, sharing such medicine of language for growth and healing. I have felt and been treated to the medicine and magic of vulture as well. Thanks for sharing this blessing.

Enjoyed and learnt from your words.Vulture medicine has only relatively recently come a few times into my life – inner visions as I live in Cornwall, UK! – and I was initially rather taken aback, knowing nothing about why it should appear and why now.
The first time it just was, sitting by my sacred fire (not that long after an owl also had appeared – didn’t realise till research these past few days that in Mayan symbolism Vulture/Owl – the glyph Cib – are interchangeable/one and the same).
Not long after this it then appeared flanked by a gryphon and I think a turtle. Again, only yesterday did I discover that the gryphon is considered to be the ancestor of vulture. Wow. Not sure about the turtle yet…then this Wednesday eve, during a group I have just joined, vulture appeared as Grandmother Shaman (or at least it was G.Shaman’s wisdom I sought, and she appeared in this guise) although actually she said she was a ‘bejewelled vulture’ which made me smile.
She flew in front of me with such grace, and wanted to replace my various sense-organs with the jewels/crystals she carried (even though I was thinking, hey hang on, I’m already rather sensitive psychically already!). But I think it was/is more to do with my earthly, so to speak, senses, that I have begun to realise fail me in being able to discern what is best for me, and being the highest best for me, therefore which are also the best for the whole – somehow this has always been twisted and contorted in me in that I am almost hard-wired to know EXACTLY what is best for everyone except myself but get completely confused if anyone (or myself) asks ‘but what do YOU want?!’ I have both never been bought up or encouraged to think in this way nor have I been able to work it out or ask for it once this fact became clear to me.
Grandmother Shaman in Vulture aspect said she would help me by this ‘replacing’ of my everyday senses with I suppose the power and clarity symbolised by precious stones and, she said, by writing down every morning what I THOUGHT I wanted for myself and for that day, and that she would, over the weeks and months, pick away at the bones of this process and eventually weed out those things that I did not really need in my life, big or small, and leave behind only those things that mattered to me, that were what I wanted/needed to the point they were indeed the same thing, and that then they would also be what would be best for the whole, naturally, without me having to continually agonise over this aspect as I so often do.
I think there is other vulture medicine also going on – neutralising the ‘poison’ of my ancestral past (the bones – skeleton/s – in the cupboard!needing to be exposed and picked clean by no less than me, the family scapegoat/black sheep) by devouring the mess and shit/owning it and turning it into good medicine (as apparently vulture pooh is a great anti-biotic!) for the good of others as well as myself – and moving into new cycles of rebirth from the dying phase of depression and despair that has plagued and held me for too long – and also my intense immersion in learning (if not yet being able to afford the experience) of the profound therapy of ‘Life Between Life’ hypnotherapy which could almost be called a carthasis of light/enlightenment at the place between death and new life – another way perhaps to interpret the latin name for the vulture, being cathartes aura or golden purifier, the experience of purification by light being that that souls most often relate as enjoying towards the start of their between lives sojourn.
Fascinating! and another reminder of how important it is to trust the medicine of the soul through inner and outer signs.